Apparatuses/devices for launching and recovery of daughter boats from and onto a mother vessel/ship are already known. Such daughter boats may be rigid inflatable boats, unmanned surface vehicles and the like. These are stowed in midships hangar or mission bay of a mother vessel.
These operations are common in respect of deploying and recovering boats say for warships and also for seismic work as well as expedition cruise ships and yachts and the like.
For launching daughter boats from a mother vessel, davits are connected to a line at each end of the boat and the boat is hoisted into water. This is time consuming and leaves the chances of detachment of the boats. Similar chances exist during recovery of the mother boat as well. Hence, this traditional method and similar such methods have potentialities of causing loss of life and material.
Deployment of ramp to avoid the problem in the aforesaid paragraph is known but then chances of collision exist in such ramp technology, which is none the less dangerous.
Slightly more advanced technology for launching and recovery of daughter boats are also known. Davit assemblies on each side of the mother vessel are known which are placed above a stationary cradle. Several transversely movable cradles carry these boats below the davit assemblies on the stationary cradle along rails for launching. However, the existence of too many transversely movable cradles limit the total space available for handling the daughter boats on the deck of the mother vessel. Further, too many davit assemblies have to be deployed for picking up the boats from the transversely moving cradles and for launching and retrieving the boats.
WO 20122069853, discloses a cradle for launching and recovering a boat. The cradle is shaped to have an axis and to support a boat. A moving mechanism moves the cradle in a first stowed position and to a second ramp position.
The prior art document acknowledged in the preceding paragraph and similar such documents not only have a complicated construction, but also fail to teach a simple mechanism by means of which a large number of daughter boats can be handled on and from the mother vessel in a very short time , using a simple technique.
GB 191214420 A describes an apparatus for deployment, retrieval and storage of daughter boats on a mother ship comprising at least two davit assemblies positioned above fixed cradles, each on starboard and port of the mother ship. A wagon transports the daughter boats transversely.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,118,499 A describes a device for deployment and storing daughter boats on a mother ship where the daughter boats are secured along a plurality of longitudinal rails. The daughter boats are moved along the longitudinal rails by longitudinal moving wagons and are transferred to a cradle on transverse rails where they are moved to deployment mechanisms on port or starboard side.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,319,855 describes a device for deployment and storing daughter boats on a mother ship, where the daughter boats are secured to movable cradles.
Published patent application WO2015/069118 of the same applicants does teach how to expeditiously launch and retrieve a large number of boats. The apparatus according to this document comprises a davit assembly positioned above a stationary cradle, each of which is located near a side edge of a deck of the vessel. The apparatus has a plurality of longitudinally movable cradles on the deck of the vessel, for securedly holding a plurality of boats thereon and the longitudinally movable cradles can move back and forth longitudinally and lift up vertically to transfer a boat onto or receive a boat from a transversely movable cradle. The transversely movable cradle can transversely move back and forth for placing a boat onto or for receiving a boat from any one stationary cradle. One disadvantage with this solution is that only one boat can be stored on each longitudinally movable cradle on each longitudinally tracks.
The present invention solves the drawbacks of prior art as recited in the preceding paragraphs by applying an apparatus which has specially designed cradles along a plurality of longitudinal tracks and at least one transverse track. One wagon move along each longitudinal track and two wagons move along the transverse track to pick up boats and deliver on stationary cradles one each at the starboard and port of the vessel.
The davit assembly atop such cradles launch the boats from such cradles or retrieve boats on such cradles for picking up by the transverse wagons and then by the longitudinal wagons for stowing in appropriate longitudinal tracks.
The boats are stowed in longitudinal tracks on stationary cradles. The stationary cradles along both the tracks are so designed so that wagons can easily pick up of load on these and can even pass through these cradles when empty thereby reducing the application of davit assembly to a minimum and making the overall process very expeditious.